1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a processing apparatus which charges, a charging method, and a storage medium storing a program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there is known a technique of paying the fee of printing executed by a printing device by using general-purpose electronic money stored in an IC card or the like (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-140990). In a value collection system disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-140990, a print job transmitted from a terminal is printed after a printing device charges for the print job by using general-purpose electronic money. In this system, an information terminal such as a PC transmits a print job, and another IC card is charged for the print job. Recently, there is also known a technique of incorporating the mechanism of general-purpose electronic money of an IC card in a mobile terminal (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-48270).
These techniques can be used to implement a printing apparatus in which the user pays for printing of every sheet by general-purpose electronic money, unlike a conventional method of first charging a predetermined amount of money, and then charging for printing of every sheet from the charge amount.
As another technique, there is known a technique of performing high-speed data transfer using a mobile terminal. It is known to perform short-distance wireless communication in addition to communication via a conventional communication network. A partner communication apparatus in short-distance wireless communication is, for example, an MFP (Multi Function Printer), and is known to transmit/receive image data and the like. By using the above-described mechanism of general-purpose electronic money of an IC card, and the mechanism of transmission/reception of image data and the like using a mobile terminal, processing from transmission of a print job to payment can be completed using one mobile terminal.
When the aforementioned general-purpose electronic money installed in a mobile terminal is used, the following problems arise. When paying a predetermined amount by general-purpose electronic money, initialization of the protocol, mutual authentication between a mobile terminal and a printing apparatus, and the like need to be performed and take a predetermined time. Recently, the printing speeds of printing apparatuses are increasing. When every sheet is charged, the time of payment by general-purpose electronic money may become longer than the time of printing, and charging may not catch up.